Mary+Mayer

On February 25, 1918, 34-year-old homemaker Mary Anna Bergman Mayer died at Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh.

The coroner found that she had died of septicemia following an abortion, most likely self-induced. She had been ill for about four days.

Note, please, that with issues such as doctors not using proper aseptic techniques, lack of access to blood transfusions and antibiotics, and overall poor health to begin with, there was likely little difference between the performance of a legal abortion and illegal practice, and the aftercare for either type of abortion was probably equally unlikely to do the woman much, if any, good. For more information about early 20th Century abortion mortality, see [|Abortion Deaths 1910-1919].

For more on pre-legalization abortion, see [|The Bad Old Days of Abortion]

Sources:
 * Coroner's summary 191802-294
 * Death certificate



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